After he announced that the suspected shooter of Charlie Kirk was in custody, Gov. Spencer Cox asked for a moment, one where he didn’t “want to get too preachy,” to talk about the division in the nation. He eventually spoke directly to young people in Utah and beyond.
“You are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage, it feels like rage is the only option,” Cox said during the Friday morning news conference.
“Your generation has an opportunity to build a culture that is very different than what we are suffering through right now, not by pretending differences don't matter, but by embracing our differences and having those hard conversations.”
Some young people loved Kirk, Cox said. Others hated him. Through his group, Turning Point USA, Kirk would show up on college campus after college campus and invite students to challenge his conservative political views. He sat under a tent emblazoned with a provocative “Prove me wrong.” It built his popularity, or notoriety.
The first stop of Kirk’s 15-date “American Comeback Tour” was Sept. 10 at Utah Valley University in Orem, where he was shot. The fifth stop was supposed to bring him back to Utah, at Utah State University.
Cox’s message about what’s been happening resonated with Utah State University freshmen and roommates Sydney Archibald and Grace Atkinson. On Friday afternoon, they sat together on the grassy field of the Logan campus’s quad.
“I really think that we do need to have hard conversations, otherwise things aren't going to change,” Atkinson said, including talking about guns and politics.
But those hard conversations, Atkinson thinks, aren’t happening. Outside of a couple of friends from high school she would discuss politics with, “you don’t really talk about it with young people.”
Atkinson thinks one reason for that is that political conversations were discouraged in her Utah public school classes. And she said school, high school or college, could be a good place for youth to learn about the facts of different issues without expressing an opinion.
Archibald said she got the message growing up that you should generally avoid talking about political issues to avoid offending people. And since people her age aren’t having those conversations, they often just follow what their parents or community believe politically.
“We need to educate ourselves and have our own opinions, instead of just, like, hearing the hate,” Archibald said.
Both said it can be even scarier sharing opinions online, where young Americans have been spending an increasing amount of time.
On social media, Archibald said, “you can't say anything else. You're gonna get so much hate, whatever side you're on.”
They’ve both seen examples after the shooting of Kirk. Atkinson had a friend who made a post opposing guns and received threats that they reported to campus police. She said her friend was not celebrating Kirk’s death but was saying it should never have happened.
To Atkinson, part of the problem is that people are quick to stick others into partisan boxes of Democrat or Republican, when she thinks most Americans are more in the middle. It’s people on the extremes, she said, who make others afraid to speak their minds.
“Just because you're Democratic or Republican or neither doesn't mean that you think and act a certain way,” Atkinson said.
The other part of Cox’s message, about the current conversation feeling like rage, also resonated with Archibald. On social media, she said she constantly sees people who are fighting, angry and rude. She said it sometimes turns into threats.
“You can have conversations and not agree,” Archibald said.
Cox called Kirk’s shooting a “watershed moment.” But he added the question remains whether this is the end of a dark chapter, or the beginning of something even worse.
USU senior Kaitlin Griffiths hopes for the former.
“I hope that this can be more of a uniting moment than it is a further polarizing moment,” she said.
Griffiths is the president of the school’s Turning Point USA chapter. She also thinks her generation struggles to have healthy political discussions with people of differing opinions.
After the shooting, though, she said she’s had both liberal and conservative friends reach out to offer their support.
Griffiths feels strongly about her beliefs, like opposing abortion and supporting the Second Amendment. After Kirk’s death, she feels empowered to keep sharing her views because she doesn’t want his conservative movement aimed at young people to slow down.
“I think everybody wants the best for themselves and for everyone else. The only thing we disagree on is the way to get there,” Griffiths said. “So I think that if we can all understand we're coming from the same place, it can create a lot more common ground than we see.”
Freshman roommates Archibald and Atkinson had differing opinions on Kirk’s views and work as a right-wing political influencer. Archibald respected him and agreed with some of his points. Atkinson thought that his words dehumanized people and caused harm. But they both thought Kirk’s death was tragic and should not have happened.
They are both concerned that this shooting will make people even more nervous to share their opinions.
“It's just scary wanting to express your opinion, because you never know what someone else might do to you because of it,” Atkinson said.
The two freshmen don’t know what exactly needs to happen to allow for more hard conversations. But they want that change, and think it's needed and overdue.
There has long been too much violence in the world, including at schools, Atkinson said. And she hopes that this moment “helps people see that, like, a lot of things need to be changed.”
“It's dangerous for both sides of the political spectrum,” Atkinson said. “It shouldn't matter where you are politically. Like, violence should not be how we're expressing things.”
